love & gratitude

I was not into love when I was growing up. I desperately sought it in all the wrong places, while denying it from friends or family because they had let me down in some form or another. I was hard-hearted. Jaded. I even told my only sister that I effin' hated her--and broke her heart.

When my mom died, I hit everyone around me, even innocent strangers, with the sledge-hammer of my grief and anger. I was inconsolable, ripped apart, empty of love and filled-to-the-brim with loneliness. But my sister took me in. She brought me, like a broken road-side kitten, into her teeny tiny newlywed home (a two room trailer in a desolate field in the middle of Nowhere, Nova Scotia). There were no friends. No boys. No path to destruction. There was only my sister and her husband. Only family.

Now, some twenty-four years later, I love. My husband, my children, friends, family .... and my sister. My heart is filled with love for her--in many ways, her, most of all. Because my sister loved me before I loved her. She cared for me before I gave anything back. She watched over me, even when I was bitter and cruel. My gratitude for her has elevated my love for her. Because of her, I'm not broken anymore.

Sometimes life sucks. Bad things happen. You get stuck in a deep, dark well and it looks like you'll never get out. But sometimes, someone drops a rope down for you. Or sends you down a snack. Or a flashlight. The point is--there's always something, however small, for which to be grateful.

Take it from me, gratitude=happiness. I can think of no other thing that pays back dividends so reliably as gratitude. 

What (or who) are you grateful for today?